


The Changeability and Fluidity of One Jean Watson

by chicagoartnerd (orphan_account)



Series: The Changeability and Fluidity Series [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF!John, F/M, Female Character In Command, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-08
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-27 02:05:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/chicagoartnerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean was pretty solidly a lesbian and Sherlock Holmes was definitely a gay, if not asexual, prat. There was just no way she could ever tell him that her devotion went beyond friendship. That's why she had to get away, not permanently but put a little space in between the confusing bits. But he followed her when she led for a change. Now she had to decide if he gets to catch her. If their relationship didn't define "Queer" then she had no idea what that word meant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started this as drabble and then it became a mission.
> 
> This is going to sound trite but I wanted to write this to show that a man and woman can be in a completely non-heterosexual relationship and it can be wonderful and sexy. There's a lot of misplaced misogyny in our fandom and women, especially Queer women, need more representation in all media as well as fandom. Wew. *puts away soap box* Now I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it.

Today was going to be long. She should have stayed at the private clinic where she was. Things were smoother, quieter, and more normal. Jean had always hated normal. Things slowed down like syrupy molasses.

She would get jumpy, start to feel every ache, every wound ghost through her veins. It was slow and maddening and to a certain degree she could understand why Sherlock got so damn petulant and reckless when he was in the same state of entropy. If she was more like him in that regard she could have made a very nice show of shooting the wall…across the street in their neighbor’s two doors down with a handgun through four plate glass windows. Because in that regard, at least, she was extraordinary. For all of her apparently banal and dull thoughts her eyesight, and the aim it granted her, were crack. There was one other interesting side to Jean Watson. She had a darker more sinister hatred of normalcy because on the outside it appeared she didn’t hate anything. She was amiable to almost sainthood.

At least that’s what Harry used to say. When they still talked regularly. But Harry had said it with a knowing sneer at the back of her throat. She had known Jean all her life and saw that below the calm faintly smiling exterior lurked carefully suppressed rage. When she was younger she had gotten in a great many fights, picked them for no reason other than to punch something, now she had realized where the boredom and anxiousness came from she could finally channel the rage in to energy. She was no longer angry all the time. Now that she could hide the reserves of her contained apathy that was almost more frightening.

Thoughts snapped rapid fire before her eyes and the stray idea that this is what it must be like in Sherlock’s head only two thousands times brighter and faster made her slightly dizzy.

She briefly wondered if Harry’s divorce from Clara was final but then a trauma patient with abdominal bleeding and a possible ruptured kidney was wheeled in and she could feel the hours of adrenaline and blood begin to stretch before her.

All the frayed edges fell away as an icy clarity and steel took hold in her. She would save this man’s life as she would save the life of the shaken woman with endoscopic pregnancy that came in afterwards and the toddler who tumbled from a balcony after that.

Because she was in a new sort of war zone now.

She had gone from the battlefield, to Baker Street, and now she was a trauma surgeon at Wellington. Each one a cacophony that catered to her need to do, she was a woman of action after all. If she wasn’t doing something with herself she would start to erode, to waste away from the inside out. And no one would notice. People would see a quiet physician working away her life alone, happy but singular in the world.

At least that’s what they would have seen if he hadn’t come crashing in to her life and tried to dissect her. He had seen something in her eyes that told him she was layered, multifaceted, and dangerous. She had immediately admired him for it. Was in complete awe that a total stranger could pick open her mind so quickly and effortlessly. And he most certainly could.

At least to a limited degree. Because if he had truly understood why she followed him she wouldn’t be working at Wellington right now.

When the opportunity had arisen she almost hadn’t believed it but she snapped it up faster than her flat mate had liked. Unfortunately things between them had gotten to the point were she would break. She didn’t particularly want to fracture their relationship with her unrequited feelings so she decided it would be better if she just distanced them.

If she could wedge them to their own devices for a bit maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much when he finally said goodbye or when she finally died. Because that was a bloody foregone conclusion. She would leave him the day her soul left this earth and no sooner unless he expressly told her to go, to leave, that he no longer needed her as a friend and companion.

But he didn’t seem to get this.

That was something he just hadn’t deduced about her and it was excruciatingly maddening. That nothing he would do short of telling her to go, or God forbid, dying himself would ever make her want to leave. The reason she took this job wasn’t to leave, it was to try and preserve. It was damage control and it was something he didn’t understand, obviously.

In fact he had been in such a rut since she started working twenty hour days that he had taken great pains to come see her at work. Literally.

He had injured himself, albeit minimally, on multiple occasions just so she would patch him up and he could babble on about the latest murder. She would grumble but fix him any way and only vaguely scold him for hurting himself to see her because in truth she felt horribly guilty. She wanted to chase scum bags and criminal masterminds all over London, she wanted to spend her days listening to him pick things apart and play that melancholy violin, she wanted to be his doctor.

But she just couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Because if she told him this it would go one of two ways; the first is he would smile smugly and then continue to abuse her devotion, the second would be he would understand what she meant when she said, “As you wish.” But seeing as how the big bloody git had never seen the Princess Bride, or any other classic and meaningful pop culture movie, she was screwed. So horrifically screwed. And not in the way she desperately wanted to be.

The whole situation was made worse because she couldn’t say anything, and neither could he apparently. He couldn’t be arsed to ask her to stay. Oh sure he complained about her taking the position and not being around to tag along on his every word and want. But he hadn’t actually given her a reason to stay. There were so many more than the one she wanted to hear so badly.

She would have taken any reason he gave her really, well short of; “I’m a sadistic tosser who loves abusing our friendship and plying you to my every whim at every hour of the day.”

Okay maybe she would have taken that one too.

She groaned inwardly at that particular revelation as she washed her hands of the latest batch of patients’ core blood. She had been so tempted to tell him. To ask him the question, but she had stuffed down the urge and the awkward accompanying feelings.

She was gay and so was he. That had been quickly established. She’d known since she was a small child and had looked up to Harry. When she came out it was most likely what had killed her mother, having two gay daughters and no hope for a “normal” family in sight. But she hadn’t thought about that in long time. And Sherlock had made it very obvious that women were usually something he avoided romantically. He made several comments about how she and Mrs. Hudson were the only ones he could stand for any extended period of time. To him she was seen as something of an oddity nothing more.

Or at least that was what she had thought until the Pool with Moriarty. If she ever saw that “thing” again she would pop his head off like a brittle cork. Since that encounter she had had some very vivid daydreams of using her particular surgical talents and some delicate instruments to see how long she could keep him alive without anesthetic while missing several internal organs.

Dreadful but necessary business that.

She might have been able to kill the bastard right there if Sherlock had just bloody run like she had told him to. His life was worth more to her than thousands of unnamed others. If she killed Moriarty then Sherlock would have died and that would have been unacceptable. She had damned who knows how many other innocents for that man.

And it was then she realized she was truly and beautifully gone. There was literally nothing she wouldn’t do for him, or let him do to her.

Unfortunately she was quite sure it wasn’t reciprocal. Moriarty had threatened to burn Sherlock’s heart from him but he hadn’t succeeded because he truly didn’t have one. At least not in any sense she could make of his reactions to that night.

But that was neither here nor there since they hadn’t heard from one James Moriarty Consulting Criminal in two years. And that was at least something to be thankful for, she ruminated, as she was wrist deep in some one’s small intestine.

After she finished one of her residents sewed them up. When she walked to the wash station outside of surgery one of the nurses she was particularly fond of named Susan came rushing up to her,

“Jean he’s back and he won’t stop hounding Milly and she’s about ready to haul off and hit him I swear!”

She ran her hand roughly down her face and sighed loudly. Susan didn’t need to say who “he” was and Mildred Moore was the Critical Care Service Director for Wellington so this was bad. She wondered if maybe he was trying to get her fired and he was just doing it in a round about way. If he was he just might have his selfish way this time. She didn’t’ think he was that malicious though, to be so underhanded as all that, so she nodded to Susan and gestured for her to lead the way. Susan bobbed her head once apologetically and then rushed off down the long white hallway towards the emergency room downstairs. She vaguely wondered how much blood she should be expecting this time.

The answer thankfully was none. Her wary blue eyes that crinkled at the corners from years of seeing lifetimes worth of mayhem observed an interesting scene. She did have to marvel at it, the picture of a stout five foot one black woman going toe to toe with her ridiculously tall and angular friend.

“Uh Service Director Moore I can take it from here.”

She hadn’t meant for it to come out in military formality but it had. Sometimes under stress she found herself back in the soldier’s mindset of do as much as you can as quick and efficiently as you can and don’t die. Mildred rounded on her with furious brown eyes,

“Doctor Watson. For the, I believe it is now sixth, time, this is not your personal practice this is a hospital. He does not take privilege over any other patient!”

She had to fight the urge to assume attention and instead looked sheepish,

“I know, I really keep telling him that but you’ve spent a few minutes with the man. He’s a bit unstoppable when he wants to be.”

This didn’t seem to placate her in the least and she continued to glare at Jean,

“If he shows his face in my unit one more time I’ll have him barred from this hospital and have you brought up before the Board. Are we clear?”

Her eyes closed and opened slowly, it was the only indication of the frustration and rage that boiled beneath. The voice that came out her mouth was surprisingly calm and reserved,

“Of course. I will be sure it won’t happen again.”

She shot her one more look before huffing off and leaving a surly Sherlock and her standing there in the middle of the unit.

Jean looked to the left and saw Susan and a few other nurses watching them with interest but when they all noticed her looking they scurried off. Rolling her eyes she turned back and was met with a cold blue glare. She returned the scrutiny with a frown and said,

“Well come on then.”

As she grabbed his coat sleeve and led him down the hall roughly to an empty patient room. He followed with surprisingly little resistance and that was when she started to worry. Once inside she nearly slammed the door and rounded on him with all her pent up fury,

“What?! What is it this time? Are you dying? Cause if not you’re going to get me bloody well fired over what? A stubbed toe? A sore throat?”

He took a step back and wobbled slightly and she squashed the urge to rush forward and steady him. He suddenly looked very vulnerable and she mentally cursed herself down for yelling at him. Because part of her anger was really at herself. For feeling the way she did. She didn’t need to take it out on her gay or possibly asexual flat mate.

When she had realized she loved him as more than a companion she had had to go for a long walk. On it she rationalized that she wasn’t as solidly gay as she thought, but neither was she bisexual. It was instead some confusing mix that could only be described as Jean. She was just herself and she loved who she loved. It was frustrating to no longer fit inside a predetermined and comfortable box that others and she herself had squarely placed her in. Because it was lonely and confusing to be “other.” At least when she identified as a lesbian normal blokes could understand that. Who knows what people would think of her now? But people did little else she supposed.

She could tell people “Queer” if they asked from now on because being gay and being in love with your opposite sex gay flat mate, well that wasn’t a very normative relationship. Or maybe she could better be described as Sherlock-sexual because there was something just completely outside the realm of traditional attractiveness, besides his vexingly massive brain, that drew her to him over, say, nurses like Susan. That was probably the most accurate way to describe the change that had occurred in her.

She had never really been attracted to men before now, had toyed with the idea when she was younger because that’s what she had been expected to do, but hadn’t felt much but uncomfortable. So she wasn’t bisexual or pansexual because that implied egalitarian attraction in varying degrees.

No Sherlock was a notable exception because never in her life before this point had she wanted to pin a man against the wall and shag his fucking brains out so badly. To make that man loose all cohernet thought would be a crowning achievement.

But there was no way in sunny Hell that he felt the same way about her.

If she was lucky she was a friend, if she was extremely unlucky she was an experiment. She wasn’t too sure where she fell now that she had left the permanent position of sidekick. She hadn’t been too sure of that position then either. Well maybe she had been sure but she most certainly hadn’t been comfortable with it.

There was something that happened at the Pool and in an instant they had become inextricably closer and horribly farther apart. That massive elephant lined with semtex and unsaid words in the room, it was something neither of them had ever talked about and now she was starting to regret it.

“I wasn’t feeling well. And I thought it would be prudent to see a doctor. Since I know one personally I thought,”

She cut him off more ruthlessly then she had meant to,

“Sherlock I’m a trauma surgeon not a general practitioner at a local A&E. I’m not your private doctor either so you have to stop doing this!”

He flinched visibly and she badly wanted to punch herself in the face. His voice was muffled and sounded so small,

“I have a fever and I can’t think clearly. It’s frustrating.”

Her eyebrows shot up but her hand darted up to his forehead of its own accord. He was burning up. When she brushed her hand gently across his brow he literally jumped and then froze. She ached to run her cool hand down the side of his face and touch it to his cupid bow lips. But she didn’t dare.

Instead she withdrew her hand quickly and scowled at him,

“Alright. Go lie down in that bed and I’ll be right back.”

Shockingly he did as he was told with minimal grumbling and she rushed down to the pharmacy to grab a bag of ibuprofen lysine.

When she got back he was curled up still in his jacket facing away from the door. He had a fever so he must have been freezing. Sighing she hooked up the fluid bag to an I.V. stand and opened the package of a fresh needle. She cleared her throat and he slowly rolled over to face her sullenly.

She didn’t scowl or roll her eyes but instead said gently,

“I know you’re cold but you need to take off your coat and roll up your sleeves.”

He eyed the drip suspiciously for a second but when he met her patient face he did as she had instructed. She tried not to trace the needle scars already on the inside of his elbow, had to fight the urge to rub them raw with the concern written all over her face.

Instead she quickly swabbed his arm and secured the tourniquet. During the whole process his eyes were averted and vacant. She briefly wondered if she should up the dosage because he might have some immunity but pushed it aside. She couldn’t ask him that. If he did then it might not be safe to treat him but he was obviously suffering to some extent.

And so her better medical judgment lost out and she rubbed the vein gently with her thumb before quickly inserting the advance catheter and then the needle and retracting it before attaching the tubing. She taped it safely to his arm in a “U” shape with Tegaderm and then stood back up to look calmly down at him.

“It’s intravenous ibuprofen lysine it should take affect in a bit. I hope to God you don’t have a built up immunity to it otherwise we might be in trouble.”

And with that she turned to leave. But his arm without the tubing reached out and stopped her.

“Can’t you, what I mean is…. Would you stay until it starts to work please?”

She went limp in his grasp and turned around to sit next to his beside again,

“You know this wouldn’t happen if you just slept a healthy amount and ate foods that were actually good for you.”

He snorted and she smiled easily. His eyes were full of mirth even though they were slightly wild from the fever and the newly administered drugs,

“I might if you were there to remind me.”

She flinched and closed her eyes as if she had been slapped. She might have well have been.

He knew where to hit her with the empathy. Either that or he really did mean it, but that didn’t bear thinking about.

Instead she said lightly,

“Oh please. You didn’t listen to me when I was there why would you now?”

Instead of making a joke or some asinine comment he looked at her hard,

“Because I know what’s it like without you there and I hate it. It’s so dull and there’s too much room you’ve left behind for errant thoughts. They fill up the space you used to occupy and they are dangerous and moronic and make me want to shoot the walls again.”

She didn't have it in her to scold him for wanting to shoot the walls. Even though she hates when he does. She doesn’t tell him how much the shots scare a deep part of her. The sound rings through her skull like an avalanche. Makes her remember what it’s like to be shot at and not be hit, which is dreadful. The promise of death was always worse than death itself.

She doesn’t say much of anything after that. Just makes a noncommittal noise and looks away. She knows it’s cowardly and that’s the last thing she’s ever been, except when it comes to Sherlock Holmes.

Well he makes her do things she never thought she would, things she never dreamed of, things she never wanted to, and some things she had always desperately wanted to but never had the chance. He had turned her life up several dozen decibels and she loved every damn minute of it.

But she wasn’t getting any younger and the life of a Consulting Detective’s doctor/companion, although exciting and fun, didn’t set up a nice pension for her. Harry had never been practical, had relied on her lovers and various relationships to support her and look where that had gotten her. So Jean had made it her mission to be the practical one. At least until she signed up for the war. That had been the first truly independently reckless thing she had ever done and she had thoroughly enjoyed her role on the battlefield. The War itself not so much but providing care to locals of all ages and healing soldiers had been rewarding.

Until she was shot and shattered.

She came back a shadow of the woman that had left. Her leg cramped uncomfortably and her hand shook as she tried to fight it. She was a worthless doctor to anyone.

Until she met him at Bart’s.

Until he thundered in to her life and swept the cane and normalcy far, far away from her feet. He had saved her inadvertently; she suspected he only knew half of what he had saved her from. She was still a person but she was in the process of becoming a ghost. The Browning in her desk drawer, immaculate as the executioner’s blade, would have been the final step.

Would have been what, a week, a month? She doubted a year; she was fading furiously in to memories of blood and sand.

But then he had filled her with chaos and she didn’t think about it any more. The thought to end her life didn’t make any sense any more. Just as she hoped that by being there with him the drugs no longer made sense to him any more. The biggest part of her sadness was the idea that maybe she wasn’t as vital to him as he had been to her.

And that is why she had had to distance herself, to prove to him and herself that she had purpose and merit all on her own. And she had. Over and over proved it but she just wanted to hear him say it. Just once.

By the time she looked back at his face he had obviously drifted in to a fitful sleep. She wondered how long it had been since he had last slept.

Whenever she was back at Baker Street he was never there and she mostly used the flat as place to sleep now what with the forty-eight hour shifts she had been pulling. He was rarely there when she was puttering around the kitchen for tea and toast and when she did see him he barely acknowledged her existence. In fact the only sign of him actually missing her presence had been the frustrating hospital visits.

Which reminded her that her brake was long over and that the emergency unit was probably missing her sorely at the moment. She got up quietly and brushed her hand over his forehead one last time. It was blessedly cooler and she smiled slightly at the sight of his suddenly childish face. He looked so young when he was asleep. Given he was prone to gleeful bouts of childishness when working on especially interesting cases. But with those strange fantastic eyes closed he looked innocent and peaceful. Two very strange things for her to think about Sherlock Holmes. She might have well add it to the list of strange thoughts she had about him then.

Before she could think properly she swooped down and gently kissed his lips before turning on her heel and practically flinging herself out of the room.If he mentioned it she would do her best to deny it as a fever dream. It was a soft mothering gesture anyway.

That’s how she consoled herself while she finished the rest of her shift alternating between vicious focus and a worried haze.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things have to bend or they will break. Looks like Sherlock is one of those things.

After her shift finally ended she decided to see if he had run off without her once again. But she found him still curled up on his side in the dark hospital room. 

She briefly considered shaking him awake and telling him to go home. But instead she gently disconnected the tubing but left the needle in. Removing that would have most definitely woken him up. Then sat down next to him on the bed. 

As soon as she did he rolled over and curled his lanky octopus limbs around her. She froze but then relaxed in resignation.  

Let him take comfort in her this one last time because he probably didn’t know what he was doing and was moving out of instinct. Not that that made her heart beat any slower but it was a nice rational thought. 

Jean was still in her scrubs, still slightly damp with the hydrogen peroxide she had used to take the blood out. She smelled like disinfectant and death and maybe the shampoo she usually used if she was lucky. 

But he didn’t seem to mind as his arms snaked around her middle and dragged her closer. She didn’t fight the motion and let herself be pulled down to a sleeping position face to face with him. His eyes were closed but she couldn’t tell if he was awake. 

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. 

For this entire situation to be acceptable for future reference she would have to shut off her brain. Jean closed her own exhausted eyes and rolled away from him so he was wrapped protectively around her back. 

Then she drifted off into a blessedly dreamless sleep trying not to think about how good it felt to be surrounded by him.  

  
She woke up with a slight crick in her neck and the bright light of day peaking loudly through the curtains. 

Glancing down at her digital wristwatch she had to stop herself from groaning out loud. It was only eight a.m. She had been asleep for a little over four hours and was still dead tired. Her next shift didn’t start for fifteen more so she could definitely pop back to Baker Street and get some more actual sleep. 

If it weren’t for the infuriatingly steady grip that held her to her prickly flat mate’s chest. His arms were locked around her stomach and waist and she was pushed up flush against him, hip to hip. She tried not to squirm as her face turned a steadier shade of red. 

It didn’t mean anything. It happened to blokes every morning. 

Or so the Telly had led her to believe. 

It could just be the friction, sometimes that did it and had nothing to do with attraction. She wasn’t going to put meaning into something that probably had none. It was safer that way for both of them. 

Huffing louder than she had intended she attempted to carefully disentangle herself from the awkwardly intimate sleeping arrangement on the ridiculously narrow hospital bed. He shifted and grumbled something behind her but blessedly let her slide out of the bed. She turned back to look at him and saw his slanted blue eyes watching her carefully. She quickly looked down at her dirty rumpled scrubs. 

Then ran her hands through her short blonde, now graying hair. 

Quickly, she picked up her rucksack from where she had dropped it beside the door and rummaged around for jeans, a t-shirt with her jumper, and jacket. When she found them she ducked down behind the bed closest to the door to change. She already felt too naked in front of this man fully clothed she didn’t want to be mentally undressed as she actually undressed. 

At least not if he wasn’t going to take that in a different direction, which was impossible so she crushed the thought.

Just as she had gotten her bottoms off and was pulling the scrubs off over her head she looked up to see his face peering down at her from over the edge of the bed. She jumped and instinctively covered her chest and crotch. With limited success.

“What are you doing?!”  
She shouldn’t be doing this. There was no reason for her to be blushing and fumbling, she was in the army after all. There was no body shame in the army, you got in and out of your clothes and you did it fast and with efficiency. He looked down at her perfectly unperturbed and said quietly,  
“I wanted to see.”  
Her mouth went completely dry. The sound of her heart nearly beating up her throat and then down into her lap must have caused her voice to come out hoarser than usual,  
“See what exactly?”  
He gestured to her shoulder expectantly,  
“Your tattoo.”  
She deflated in relief but also disappointment. 

Then gruffly pulled the top of her undershirt off and turned to reveal the winding thorns and ivy that wove in and out of the bullet wound on her shoulder that was splitting up a caduceus with a crown over it. 

She had had the tattoo artist do a more feminine rendering of the RAMC insignia being spilt by her wound. 

There had been many reasons for getting it. It was the most cathartic thing she had done since she got back from the War. 

The pain of the needle over her scar tissue had been excruciatingly intense but while it was being etched into her flesh her hand had stopped shaking, her knee straightened smoothly and she could finally feel again. 

Because at least frustration and rage were emotions.

And so was grief, grief for the woman who had died in her arms and grief for the life she had lead before the shot. It was also a better reminder. 

The bullet wound had been an ugly memorial, not unwelcome but definitely unsavory, this was much more human. 

When she looked at the tattoo after a shower or in the morning getting ready she felt solid again. It was as much a part of who she was now than the wound that sat at its center.

Then he was touching it, running his long fingers gently over the deadened and over-sensitive flesh of the wound, tracing the snake and thorns absently.  
“Fascinating.”  
He exhaled slowly and as she felt his warm breath ghost over it she couldn’t stop the full body shiver. 

It was more than enough; in fact it was far too much. She was too damn naked in every sense of the word. She jerked her top back on and glared at him,

“If you’ve had quite enough of a look I’m going to get dressed.”  
Then shooed him with both her hands.    
He harrumped before leaving back to his bed,  
“I’m curious though, any more tattoos Jean?”  
She almost ripped her jeans shoving her feet into them so fast and the same problem with pulling off her sweat stained undershirt. 

But she had had enough of it and if he was going to tease two could bloody well play at that racket.  

She stood up in nothing but trousers and her sports bra. She grinned at his stricken face and said,

“You’re clever. Why don’t you just deduce that?”

When he didn’t make any comeback she snorted and smiled as she threw on her shirt, jumper, and jacket. She wanted to taunt him about it. 

It felt good in some vain sadistic part of her to make him suffer at least a little bit like she had. And she wasn’t the least bit modest. 

Certainly not around him of all people. 

Nope, not even a little. Why should she be? 

There was absolutely no reason for her not to let him watch her get dressed. And yet she had been leery of it before. 

Now she knew why. 

One look at his eyes told her the truth of it. 

All the words she could have said died on her lips. 

There were two options it seemed. She could turn around and leave. 

Just go home to 221B and not talk about what she saw there, what had been laid bare before her all of sudden. There was so much emotion in that one look. It hurt her physically to gaze back but she couldn’t stop. He was a whirlpool and was drawing her under. 

She would gladly drown even though it would inevitably destroy her. 

The second option would be to not leave and try not to run and pounce him. 

To instead walk calmly, and stand in front of him, then ask for permission before snogging the ever loving fuck out of him. 

Because that is what the look he was giving her made her really want to do. Pull him in, hold him close, consume him. Feel that deep baritone moan in her throat. 

God how she wanted it. 

Something in her face must have given away at least part of what she was thinking because he gasped sharply and his lips parted and it was too much. She turned her back and roughly slammed her hand on the door in front of her.

“Wait.”  
His voice was a jagged whisper several octaves too high.  
She waited. She had waited a long time so what was a few more seconds? 

But they dredged on by and still he said nothing. She let her breath escape her in a quiet hiss of defeat. It was no good. 

Neither one of them were good at expressing their feelings, at least not for each other it seemed. 

Sherlock had no problem voicing his distaste or hatred of Anderson or Mycroft but it seemed telling her why he wanted her to stay was beyond his mental faculties right now. 

It might be for the rest of her life. 

Could she live with that? Could she continue on as if there was nothing more than friendship between them? 

That the looks, and occasional touches would never mean anything more than the surface they rested on? Well she had done it so far. 

It would hurt to keep doing it but she could do it for him. And that’s what it really came down to. She would suffer, suffer endlessly, suffer any thing; this, Moriarty’s torture, a lonely death, if it meant he would be happy. 

Or at least as close to happy and content as he could get. 

She wasn’t sure how much that would be but she wanted to see it. 

Jean wanted to see him smirk at her again, every day for the rest of her life. If that wasn’t what loving someone meant then there was no such thing as love. 

No it went beyond loving, this vicious self-sacrificing need. Whatever this feeling was they hadn’t invented a word for it yet, if they had it was in a language that was last breathed a thousand years ago. It was something primal and sharp and horrible. 

And even though it was shredding her slowly, taking its time with her soft little bits, she relished it, wallowed in what he made her feel. Because she did feel. Whether he knew it or not he had her heart and devotion and even though it looked like she was going to leave she was no longer capable of turning that doorknob. She was horrifically addicted to him. 

The codependency was unhealthy and manic to a state of insanity. He had the ability to completely destroy her and it was horrible but she wanted to stay there even if he did.

They were both cracked it seemed. 

They made an excellent set of chipped china though. Perfectly out of place in the rest of the grand world of things. But together in their oddity. Strangely the same. 

She turned around and slammed herself flat against the back of the wooden door painfully. He wasn’t more than half a body-width away from her. 

Towering over her and giving her the same look he had from the bed. She wasn’t sure where the words came from but they crept from her mouth in quiet gasps,

“Tell me why I should. Go on. Use that giant brain of yours and tell me exactly why I shouldn’t walk out that door right now.”  
He closed the gap between them, lightning quick and leaned down, his lips feather light, ghosting the side of her face towards her ear,  
“You’re clever. Why don’t you deduce it?”

The groan she made couldn’t be stifled but she locked her knees and screwed her eyes shut to the sound of his deep chuckle. 

No she wasn’t going to let him off that easily. 

It was so tempting just to lean into him, let it happen, it would be a welcome little death after all this time if he would just put her out of her misery. 

But she was a woman of action and damn it all if she wasn’t going to get an answer out of him.

“Not good enough. You’re good with words and you’ve never been at a loss for them before. Why now? You can deduce by now why I can’t leave but tell me why you won’t let me.”  
She felt his sigh creep over her face and then his long thin hands were cradling her cheeks,  
“Jean. Look at me.”  
She didn’t want to. The raw feeling of it was written all over her body and she could barely handle this small level of touch and intimacy from him.   
The impending doom of the entire situation was finally hitting her. 

She pried them open and was met with guileless blue-gray blown wide with pitch-black pupils. 

You didn’t need to be a doctor to recognize it as arousal but it helped to focus on the more clinical side of things, that way her own physical response to start sucking his throat wouldn’t win out.  

Focus, she had enough restraint to outlast him for the time being she just had to focus on it. 

She wasn’t doing all sorts of lovely dirty things to him until he answered her and then begged for it panting her name. She deserved at least that much. 

Fortunately she didn’t have to try and wring it out of him, it just came pouring out in that liquid baritone of his, dangerous and almost too much for her to stand,

“What would you have me say? How can I express it all when I don’t even know what half of it is? I’ve never felt this way before and it’s maddening. I’m giddy and maudlin, I’m interested and fascinated and then frustrated and snappish with everything you do. Every part of you, of what you do. It’s overwhelming in a way that’s new and exciting and utterly mad and terrifying. I want to draw away and examine it but you make me live it, feel it. The things I feel....”  
“I want to come up behind you while you’re putting tea on in the kitchen and bury my face in your neck and just breath you in, smell, hold you there for hours. I want to hear you say my name in all the ways you do, with the frustrated inflection or the fond note at the end or the little sigh of resignation. I want to watch you read the paper or type on your computer, hunched over and trying so hard to make sense of it all. I need you there otherwise the maelstrom is too much.”  
“ You’re a welcome distraction as well as focal point for the firestorm of my intellect. It burns me up when you’re away. You do help me deduce Jean, whether I realize it at the time or not. And that’s just the all the time feelings.”  
“Other times I want to keep you so close it might smother you because I’ve seen you hurt. Watched you hurt and wanted to kill them, whoever it was that made you feel that way, and make the death they have a blessed mercy at the end of it.”  
“And other times still I find myself thinking the most dangerous thoughts of all. Of what you would taste like. What it would be like to push you down into the couch and kiss you till you’re gasping.”  
“ Sometimes when you’re here working I’ll be alone in my room and you know what I’ll start thinking about? If you were there with me instead here, if I was curled up in your arms. Imagining it was your hands running down my chest touching me, fucking me, instead of my own. Is that a sound enough answer for you?”  
“Oh God yes.”

She barely got the last part out before they were kissing each other. It wasn’t the slow steady hum of a kiss that she had always fantasized about when she guiltily touched herself to thoughts of him. 

Now that she knew it was a shared fantasy the kiss was anything but warm and fuzzy and it was a million times better for it. 

She ran her tongue along his palette and he moaned and pressed her harder against the door. 

Her hands jerkily ran over his chest and she felt his nipple become hard through the sinfully thin fabric and groaned. 

God it should be illegal to wear shirts that tight. 

She bet anything Lestrade would back her up on this just for the fun of seeing Sherlock terrorize the petty criminals in processing lockup. 

If she wasn’t the one to put the breaks on they were going to shag against the sodding door. 

She needed to drag them out of there now. Not that the thought of fucking right there didn’t seem appealing as he sucked and bit on the pulse throbbing in her throat.

“Sherlock.”  
He hummed against her neck and pushed her harder against the door, clumsily grinding against her. She had to rasp it louder so it didn’t come out like a moan but instead a command,  
“Sherlock!”  
He stopped and suddenly that unnerving gaze was meeting hers once more. The look was concerned but also extremely impatient.   
“Was my declaration not sufficient? I’m sure I can think of a few other ways to show you I meant every word of it.”

His cupid bow lips quirked up in one corner and the look in his eyes was sinful to put it mildly.

She had to viciously dig her nails into the palms of her hands to stop her eyes from rolling back into her head at that. 

But she had to focus, if they were going to fuck each other into the ground it was going to be on the rug of 221B not the cold linoleum of the hospital floor. 

“Sherlock I’m going to open this door and we are going to walk out of here quickly and calmly, then I’m going to hail a cab back to 221B. Once we are safely up the stairs with the door shut I’m going to fuck you on every semi-clean surface in the flat. Sound satisfactory?”  
His eyes blew even wider and he stared at her like she had suddenly turned into a fresh triple homicide in a bricked up cellar. Then the look of fascination and admiration turned into a dark and feral twist of his thin lips,  
“Oh yes. I think would be a good place to start but I will need further data of course.”

Suddenly her face lit up, channeling some of his deviousness and she couldn’t turn that damn door handle fast enough. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am currently writing chapter three which will be the last chapter so cheers! <3  
> Also here's a picture of Jean's RAMC tattoo. http://archiveofourown.org/works/500026


End file.
